1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to interfacing between clients and information sources and, more particularly, to optimizing use of available bandwidth between the clients and information sources using one or more information caching features, information source management features, query handling features, and/or distributed architecture features described herein.
2. Related Art
Information systems are often bandwidth limited in the number of requests for information they can handle within a given period of time.
For example, tasks like pricing an airline ticket and searching for a lowest available airfare (low fare search) require flight availability information as input. Flight availability information typically indicates what seats are available on a given flight, and/or at what price levels. Airline flight availability information is maintained on a variety of different information systems, such as computer reservation systems (CRSs), such as those operated and/or maintained by Sabre, Galileo, Worldspan, or Amadeus.
Typically availability information is retrieved from an airline availability information source, such as a CRS, by sending a message to the information source. Often these messages must be sent via a set of proxies, such as computer terminals intended for use by human travel agents.
Conventional proxies can generally send and receive one or two availability messages per second. However, recent technological developments are increasing the demand on information systems, such as CRSs. For example, applications like low fare search require potentially large numbers of availability messages to be sent. Furthermore, such applications are often implemented as parallel processes, where programs running on a many machines may all request availability information, potentially simultaneously. The increasing demand is expected to increase delays in information retrieval from information sources.
There is a need, therefore, for methods and systems to optimize available bandwidth between information requesters (“clients”) and information sources.
In the airline reservation industry, for example, there is a need for methods and systems, such as a software server program, to act as intermediary between clients/applications that need availability information and information systems, such as CRSs and/or CRS proxies that provide the availability information.